Chávez claims victory in Venezuela vote

Venezuela's leftwing president, Hugo Chávez, claimed victory today in a national referendum on his rule, while his opponents charged him with fraud.

The Venezuelan electoral commission said that, with 94% of ballots counted, Mr Chávez had secured 58% of the vote. His opponents have 42%.

In a speech to thousands of cheering supporters, the president said it was "impossible" that his victory could be now reversed.

"Venezuela has changed forever," Mr Chávez told the crowd from a balcony of the presidential palace in the pre-dawn darkness. "There is no turning back."

Mr Chávez is popular with the poor, but his redirection of oil revenues towards social policies has angered the middle classes, oil producers and some unions.

Opposition leaders refused to accept the results and demanded a manual recount, claiming their own exit polls showed almost 60% of citizens voted to oust Mr Chávez.

"We categorically and absolutely reject these results," said Henry Ramos Allup, leader of the Democratic Coordinator coalition of opposition parties. "The national elections council has committed a gigantic fraud."

The recall vote - which Mr Chávez had to win to stay in power - was expected to be close. A much higher turnout than had been predicted raised fears among the president's campaign team that opposition support had increased.

Polling stations stayed open for eight hours more than had been scheduled to allow everyone who wanted to the chance to vote.

There was no immediate reaction from former US president Jimmy Carter or César Gaviria, head of the Organisation of American States, who helped monitor the vote.

The OAS independently collects a sampling of results in elections it monitors, but does not release them when they coincide with results announced by local election authorities. The organisation withheld its own results Monday, indicating they coincided at least loosely with the official tally.

The presidential recall vote, the first in Venezuela's history, was intended to end two years of sometimes violent protest against Mr Chávez's rule.

He was briefly ousted in a 2002 coup, and last year had to battle against a two-month general strike and political riots.

Uncertainty over the future of Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, has contributed to record high oil prices, which have reached more than $46 (£25) a barrel.